Now
that a jury of what I can only imagine to be his peers -- a jury composed
of fine, upstanding Vermonters -- has sentenced convicted murderer
Donald Fell to death for the 2000 slaying of “North Clarendon
grandmother Terry King,” I think it’s time to take a closer look at this
“culture of life” everyone keeps talking about.

By “everyone,” I mean the righteous, the
“eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth” people. Mainly, these are
“fundamentalist” Christians, who believe -- no matter which “testament” it
comes from and no matter when, where or by whom the texts were translated
-- that the published Bible is the "literal" word of God. You can’t argue
with people like that and I don’t see why anyone would try. It is their
job not to think. They most certainly should never be allowed on juries.

Of course the spirit of vengeance -- the eye
for an eye -- knows no creed, denomination or nationality. It is the law
of the ape. It includes whacked-out Muslims, who think that blowing up
buses and skyscrapers is the right response to Western policy in the
Middle East. It includes Jewish settlers in Palestine, who refuse to give
up “their” property on the grounds that there is such a thing as “Greater
Israel” (a biblical idea). It includes Native Americans, African
Americans, gay Americans -- all Americans who think that a terrible wrong
has not been made right. It also includes George W. Bush, who stole the
term “culture of life” from the late pope, John Paul II, and now uses it
for political purposes.

Hush your letters of protest -- I don’t want
to hear them! Was it not Bush, during the Terri Schiavo spectacle, who
urged us to “foster a culture of life,” to “build a culture of life” and
to “err,” if necessary, on a “presumption in favor of life”?

It was. We all know he was lying -- ask
anyone in Iraq. Bush doesn’t give a damn about “life” if it gets in the
way of money and oil, whereas I think the Pope, somewhere among those
robes, crowns and jewels, actually did.

A little history: It was in 1993, in a
speech in Denver, Colorado, that the now-to-be-canonized John Paul II told
a throng of nearly a million people that every human life was worth the
same as any other, and fully as much, and that there was no exception to
this rule. No exception. I guess the phrase “beyond redemption” didn’t
enter his head, and that he was also familiar with the wisdom of Solomon,
which treats cases that can’t be resolved in earthly terms by cutting the
baby in half. Normally, I wouldn’t drag myself for candy to defend the
Catholic Church, but in this case I can’t help myself.

“In our present social context,” John Paul
declared in Denver, “marked by a dramatic struggle between the culture of
life and the culture of death, there is need to develop a deep critical
sense capable of discerning true values and authentic needs.”

Note that, please: A deep critical sense. It
might be argued -- it has been argued -- that the vicious murder of Terry
King supersedes all other values and needs. But in Denver the Pope wasn’t
talking just about “hot-button” issues -- abortion, euthanasia, cloning,
etc. -- but specifically, also, about war and capital punishment, which he
fully and completely and forever condemned. The death penalty, he said,
was justified only “in cases of absolute necessity … when it would not be
possible otherwise to defend society.” This is not the case with Donald
Fell, already locked up in perpetuity, however painful that fact might be
for the Kings.

For the record: The death penalty in Vermont
was “discarded” in 1965, and eliminated altogether in 1987. Terry King
herself was murdered in New York State, and the only way they could try
Fell in Burlington (where the crime was not committed), and later
determine to kill him in turn (though he will not be executed here), was
through some technical shenanigan of federal law -- “crossing state
lines,” I believe, about which the Bible has nothing to say. “Caesar and
God,” maybe, but that’s as far as it goes.

Neither Caesar nor God made the laws of
Vermont, and neither will bring Terry King back to her grieving family.
Neither will the willful murder of Donald Fell. The jurors who have
perpetrated the outrage of this death sentence, who have offended the
living ethic of this state, and who have extended the suffering of the
King family by many decades -- Fell will be alive for a long time, and
will “cost more” on appeal than he ever could as a locked-up prisoner --
should indeed “go back to their lives,” as it was put last week by the
local daily: “Some of them to haggard apartments,” some to “luxury homes
at the end of dirt roads with mountaintop views,” some “to cozy,
side-street Dutch Colonials and large wood-framed homes on bustling main
roads,” and some “all the way back to the Northeast Kingdom.” As if that
were China, which, right now, it might as well be.

When they do go back, the jurors in this
case should hang their heads in shame. No “emotional testimony,” no
consideration of the “barbaric” details of Terry King’s death -- as
opposed to whose 28 children blown up on Sunday in Iraq? -- can excuse
this violation of the wisdom and good nature of the people of Vermont,
who, long ago, abolished the death penalty, as did every civilized society
on earth.